Why takeaway is good for Australian restaurants - Eat Out

Jul 04, 2025

Ever found yourself on the couch, finger hovering over the ‘order’ button? Takeaway can get a bad rap, but your Friday takeout could be helping your local.

We’re all so used to talking about the cost-of-living crisis. But there’s also a cost of- doing-business crisis for many of Australia’s hospitality operators. They’ve seen a rise in labour costs, of ingredients – of everything.

The result? Ever-shrinking profit margins.

UberEats surveyed 500 Australian restaurant owners for its Pulse Check Restaurant Report 2024, and found that 24 percent believed that the incremental revenue from partnering with on-demand food delivery services helped them keep the doors open.

Chat Thai Restaurant — Khao Soi at Chat Thai

Meanwhile, research from point-of-sale and payments platform Lightspeed suggests that in 2024, the average spend by consumers at restaurants and cafes when dining out and purchasing takeaway was comparable. So could ordering in be helping your favourite local?

And could a Friday night takeout at home actually be supporting the hospitality scene you love? Coming out of the pandemic, many operators learned a lesson about the value of takeaway and delivery. Now it’s become not only a means of survival but a revenue stream that’s integral to the operating model of many businesses – sometimes driving growth beyond an original vision.

The take-out from the pandemic

When it opened in 2018, Bella Brutta pizzeria, in Sydney’s Newtown, wasn’t slated to have a significant takeaway element, according to co-owner Luke Powell. Then came the pandemic. From a business point of view, Powell says it was, “Very lucky that pizza translated well as a takeaway model.”

He reflects on the meal boxes that he sold from his other business, LP’s Quality Meats, when they had a Chippendale restaurant site. When it reopened to diners, that side hustle fell away, he says, whereas at Bella Brutta, they kept going, albeit realising that their model had to change.

Pizza at Bella Brutta — Out of the Bella Brutta ovens

“Once we were doing the takeaway along with the restaurant again, it just became really tight on the staff,” says Powell. “There were times where we just wouldn’t allow [takeaway] orders, and then in the down times, in between the turns of the restaurant, the pizza guys… they’d get absolutely flooded with pizza orders and just would not stop.”

Powell says that his priority was the restaurant, so pushing back on order times and longer waits become commonplace. In his words: “Not very sexy.” When nearby premises became available, takeaway- focused offshoot BBTA (Bella Brutta Takeaway) was born.

Powell says that the original incarnation of Bella Brutta wasn’t built for takeaway in many ways, but most notably it was the oven capacity. “That time was a learning curve,” he says, “It was almost like we could just rebuild it in a way that would suit the takeaway model.

Over there now, it’s so streamlined that it never ever feels out of control. BBTA is a fully fledged, complementary extension of Bella Brutta.” They’ve made it work on their terms, not feeling that they must be a part of the boom of delivery apps. “We did attempt to do delivery initially, and that was just a whole can of worms,” Powell says.

“We decided to put our foot down and make it pick-up only. Also, you just start giving away too much towards these ordering platforms, and as a customer, you can’t contact the restaurant.” BBTA operates through its own website.

Related recipe: Luke Powell’s pepperoni pizza

Take it from an expert

For Palisa Anderson of storied restaurant group Chat Thai, takeaway has always been part of the business model: “The very first iteration of the takeaway was [that Mum] used to walk the orders to customers [close to] the Darlinghurst restaurant,” she says. “It was considered a fine- dining Thai restaurant at the time, but there were periods in the evening where she just realised she needed to open up all the streams of ordering so that the restaurant could survive.”

While delivery and pick-up has been part of the Chat Thai model since 1989, they continue to evolve, choosing partners that have a wide radius of delivery from their restaurants, and varying the delivery menu between restaurants as they do for eating in. They also have an eye on experience and sustainability.

As with Bella Brutta, Chat Thai also has its own app that customers can use, as well as being on the notable platforms. While you might think it’s impersonal, Anderson disagrees, saying they know their regulars who order takeaway as well as dine in at the restaurant: “We know, like, oh, this is the guy with a gluten- free wife. If you see the same people, say, every Tuesday, you remember them.”